Steve Wiley Ready To Strike Again Driving The Texas Rattlesnake

The biggest No Prep races start with a drivers meeting and a chip draw to see who your first round opponent is, if there’s one driver you don’t want in the first round, or ever for that matter, it’s Steve Wiley. In the No Prep world Wiley has built a reputation as one of the best behind the wheel of his Texas Grim Reaper Corvette, but now he’s wheeling the Texas Rattlesnake for owner Ronnie Hobbs and it looks like he’s ready to dominate the Dirty South No Prep Series.

The list of wins Wiley has racked up on the No Prep circuit is impressive and includes Outlaw Armageddon and the Bounty Hunters series. The plan for 2017 was to take his own 1963 Corvette back out and keep on winning, but a new opportunity arose for Wiley and he decided to take advantage of it.

“Ronnie put a post out on social media that he needed help with a Hemi car that he purchased and I was contacted about it. We started talking and I came onboard to help him with the car. We switched it over from a clutch to a converter to make things easier at the track and lower the learning curve overall. That, and converters have come so far in technology that there’s no need to mess with a clutch,” Wiley says.

Soon, the 1953 Tim McAmis-built Corvette was in Wiley’s shop getting a Lencodrive added and some electronics changed to match his setup in the Grim Reaper to make running the car easier. The Texas Rattlesnake uses a roots-blown, Hemi-based motor, which is different than the screw blower combination that Wiley’s uses; but that was quickly addressed with some testing.

“We took the car out and did some testing to work out the bugs and see what the car liked. There were some challenges, but on the last test lap at Ennis [Texas] that pretty much showed me I was going in the right direction with the car and we were ready,” Wiley explains.

Wiley and his team ended up at the Dirty South race purely by chance, but that choice to make the event at San Antonio paid off in a big way for them with the win. “We talked about going to Redemption 7.0 but due to a family obligation we couldn’t go and that’s when the Dirty South race came up on the radar. After talking with Ronnie we made the choice to head to the San Antonio race and it worked out really well for us,” Wiley says.

The Dirty South event impressed Wiley and he plans on hitting the next event at the Caprock Motorplex, and maybe more. “I’ve raced with a lot of those guys in the series at other events and it’s nice to run with so many good people. I’ve known Mike [Murillo, promoter of the DSNP] for a long time and the have a good group of people putting this series together. They’re providing a good payout for us racers while bringing in great crowds, and who doesn’t like to race in front of a lot of people? We’ve only missed one event so there’s a good chance we might try to make a run at the title now,” Wiley says.

You can see Wiley behind the wheel of the Texas Rattlesnake at the next Dirty South Racing Series event June 16-17^th at the Caprock Motorplex. All the No Prep action will be broadcast RIGHT HERE on SpeedVideo when racing begins. This broadcast is brought to you by Scoggin Dickey Parts Center, Texas Speed & Performance, Design Engineering, PRW Industries, Royal Purple, Lunati, Fast, and Moroso.